1/20/24
I am working my way through the book Playing Oppression | The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games by Mary Flanagan and Mikael Jakobsson, a book that came out in 2023. Midway through the book I’ve learned that Klaus Teuber, the designer of Die Siedler von Catan (Settlers of Catan) (1995), went through some iterations of the game in its 4 year development, he actually started with square tiles that players would flip. It was not his first game, he was already an award-winning game designer by that time, but had a hard time finding a publisher for Catan. Kosmos took it on, not expecting it to be successful.
In my other post exploring the Underlying Pattern of the Flower of Life in the board design, I was working with the assumption that Teuber had intended to use it. I don't see the same pattern in considering the use of squares in any arrangement.
I can see how he came to a hexagon though. Though its not noted in the book as to whether he started with 19 tiles or not. Without the outer shape, the blocks look like no more than a disembodied bit of brick wall.
I will try to let other minds wonder if Teuber found the pattern and recognized it, or if the pattern was part of why the new format seemed to “click” with people—and cruise away from that idea in this creative process.
One of our fellow EGG artists shared a great podcast from MIT featuring an interview with Flanigan about a week before our group show at MING in the spring of 2023. It was eye-opening, on the level of acknowledging that there is a lot of dissonance to work through in living life day-to-day if one isn’t living in oppression every day. Also to learn that the history of nations using board games to instill oppressive ideals and encourage exploitative and violent practices had been a long-running process.
Players of popular board games that model these practices are probably largely unaware of this because key indicators have been played down or reworked in the evolution of these games’ designs and playing mechanics. However, the book highlights several modern games in circulation that gravitate to themes that many find nostalgic, though all kinds of sources—that give voice to the perspective of peoples and cultures left out of the player cast of these games—have been challenging some of these narratives consistently for generations.
A giant game of Catan being played at Gen Con Indy 2003. This is one of many custom, extra-large Catan boards seen during demonstrations and tournaments at Gen Con. Image CCBY Alan De Smet
AFRICA Board Game Reiner Knizia 99% COMPLETE Gold Sieber Rio Grande 2001 OOP - ebay listing
1/24/24 Update
I finished reading Playing Oppression. In doing so, I quickly discovered that several games use the hexagon pattern. I also learned that games work from similar mechanical points, components, themes. That’s part of the encouraged study from this book, the challenge in overcoming the relentless re-play of colonial themes in board game design.
I come to this project from a graphic design standpoint, with some years of interdisciplinary study and some amount of applied learning since leaving school.
Graphic design does a similar thing. The practice works from the foundations of understanding. Brands, ads, packaging, websites, promotional materials — all follow some basis of familiar elements that people will recognize, so as not to ask them to think to solve the challenge before them of whether or not to make purchase. An advertiser is giving a person the impression that they are solving a problem for themselves when they buy the thing one is selling.
In my whole lived experience, I know that people turn to game time to relax and do something fun - and I hold the theory that they intend to come together and that some of the behaviors learned while in a state of community connection become values over time.
My study has shown that games have been used to build camaraderie between generations, while learning strategy, along with cultural values.
Die Kolonisten (The colonists) game - included in the form of an insert in Der gute Kamerad (1910/1911) - referenced in Playing Oppression. Image sourced from Board Game Geeks.
In the coming iterations of New SUM, I really considered working with the Flower of Life pattern, continued over a rectangle, consciously, and with the intention of treating it with greater respect…. in hopes that working together art observers can become players, who may be sincerely seeking to find solutions for whatever real-life challenges they bring to the community to play out together. It is a great relief in our time to be able to look at some of the overwhelming tragedies before us, and some of the opportunities that come, in an abstracted way, and imagine, even enact on some level, something different..
Where I see it in ancient depictions indicates that it may have been part of art carved into ancient reliefs used by cultures using violence and domination to overtake cultures that were either egalitarian, and/or had much older systems of existence established. In some others, placed on it’s own in a circle on an ancient stone wall in Egypt, perhaps only meant as a symbol to meditate on, then work with those illuminated thoughts.
DaVinci’s use of it as it associates with the human body and the constructs of our world is where I was leaning.
Decolonizing my thought processes is a live-action situation—the battle in my brain.
Avast ye* familiarity-lover, do something different. Don’t follow in the steps of who used the Flower of Life Pattern in ancient times as depicted on walls of conquering armies. Don’t lean towards the use of a symbol a high number of people deem powerful and sacred. Don’t do it, especially because you don’t understand it. Don’t.
Backing away from that inclination now.
Leaning towards patterns available to me, to all of us, in Nature.
*stop and pay attention - search results landing firmly in Talk Like a Pirate Day.
References:
Flanagan, M., & Jakobsson, M. Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games.